


the one that saves me

by harleyhearts



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Light Angst, Love at First Sight, Old Married Couple, POV Han Solo, Reunions, hanleia makes me feral wbk, no beta we die like Jedi, they are soulmates WE BEEN KNEW!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 09:21:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28936200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harleyhearts/pseuds/harleyhearts
Summary: Han Solo, and his idea about love. True love.
Relationships: Lando Calrissian/Han Solo - past, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Qi'ra/Han Solo - past
Kudos: 19





	the one that saves me

**Author's Note:**

> wrote this late in the evening because hanleia lives on my mind 24/7 and they are my one and only!!! thank you to Cat for hyping me always hunny <333 title from wonderwall. there is... zero plot. i just have Feelings........ enjoy?

Han’s had many ideas of love, but such a thing as  _ true  _ love doesn’t cross his mind until a certain princess whispers, “Okay, hotshot.”

He hasn’t thought of love, falling in love, or platonic love, even, in what feels like forever. Since Qi’ra, since Lando, the need for someone to tell him everything with their eyes, for someone to care about him, for someone to protect, shrunk to microscopic size and disappeared somewhere unknown in the far back of his chest.

To be fair, he’s never been quite good at love.

Granted, Qi’ra leaving wasn’t his fault. Completely, anyway.

And after winning Lando’s ship over, he’s pretty sure their relationship is in rather deep water. Maybe he’s avoided him for a while. Maybe Lando told him to stay away, which didn’t break his heart, per say, but the need for love only ducked further away from his consciousness.

He’s got Chewie, so who cares about people?

That is, until Leia Organa.

In certain ways she reminds him so much of Lando, almost like his brain’s going on repeat. She seems unreal, but she is definitely real.

Han realizes this when he finds out he enjoys teasing a bit too much. Just like Lando, perhaps. Except the difference is just how desperately the need for… not love,  _ her attention _ , first, resurfaces somewhere inside him and moves all the way to his throat in hyper speed, and he finds himself talking without thinking.

Okay, okay, not the first time he’s done that, granted.

He comes to a certainty that she hates him, which feels rather like metaphorical hands squeezing his lungs for air,  _ weird _ , until the princess kisses him again on Endor.

It takes him a few to catch up with her lips, with the revelation that her and Luke are  _ siblings _ , and that someone so put together, so stubborn and hard-shelled, so…  _ beautiful _ , could love him.

Could love him back.

And Han’s still not quite sure if his chest is supposed to feel light like a feather, or if that need for love again is supposed to push on his ribcage, to the point where it’s almost clawing its way out into the starlight.

But certainly, it's a whole new feeling longing for Leia’s breath on his shoulder, neck, face, mixed with his own.

Han can’t say he’s ever liked taking orders, for better or for worse, but he can’t help wanting to  _ please  _ her. Or no, make her happy. He loves it when her tiny vessel almost explodes with fury and rage, but time and again, he finds a preference for the pink warmth taking over her features when she smiles.

And for the first time he’s ever known, the need to keep moving, always running from something unexplainable, seems sunken into the ground.

Okay, he’s been running from the law, to be fair.

Maybe it feels good to stay. To be loved. To  _ love _ .

...

Landing his eyes on Leia again, after so many, too many years, their reunion is unlike any he’s had before.

Han supposes this shouldn’t surprise him anymore, considering how special he found the princess-  _ General _ , to be. Which is why something that feels quite like guilt is fighting its way to his brain.

He’s always been an expert at suppressing feelings, you wouldn’t believe, but since they met, she’s made it impossibly difficult.

Maybe that’s why he left, in the end.

Of course,  _ no _ , that’s far from it, but this guilt is too bitter and angry for him to swallow.

And he finds after all this time, Leia looks at him the same.

Han would go to the end of the universe to claim that he knows her better, in a quadrillion more ways than he ever knew Qi’ra and Lando.

His first love was ripped away, granted, and age becoming him, he’ll have to let the admittal that his old friend and himself were never really made to work out, were they?

That’s the bickering he found so familiar in Leia at first, but with her, it felt special. Will still feel special, if she’d spare him a thought.

Because another thing admittal does to him is the clarification that the princess had always been too good for him. She told him at the beginning, he’s a  _ scoundrel _ , and if the general didn’t have that wistful expression in her eyes at this moment, she might’ve broken out the, “I told you so.”

Han’s heard that many times in his all too long life now, but he loved it when it came from her lips.

In the end, he kept running. 

That form of peace, he thinks, they found felt like he could finally let out his breath, rest his bones after never sitting still, he’d hoped, utterly and passionately so, hidden behind his put on stoicism so he didn’t feel quite so exposed to the world, that it would just  _ last _ .

That’s what true love is about. Han’s no expert, though.

And when his princess speaks, it’s like his whole vessel aches and turns and draws closer. Longing, huh. Missing someone. Deeply. He’d missed her.

Which is obvious, of course. It doesn’t surprise Han any longer, it doesn’t surprise Chewie, and it doesn’t surprise Leia.

She always looked through him. So annoying. No.

She knew him, and she still knows him.

Which is why, when she says that request he’s heard before, that makes his chest…  _ his heart _ turn itself inside out, Han doesn’t hesitate for even a millisecond.

Just like on Endor. Just like on the Falcon. Just like after their big adventure was over, just like the many adventures they had, and those they didn’t, those that simply became his new normal.

He never took himself to want to settle down, but obviously, Leia read the truth of his wants and needs, in the way he moved and the words he didn’t say.

He speaks with his actions. She knows this.

The only surprise that grazes his mind is her teasing that never comes, and his doesn’t, either. Wrong time, maybe. 

Right here, anywhere with her, everywhere he’s seen her when she was absent from his space, that felt-  _ feels _ like the right time. The only right of any of this.

“Hold me.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you've come this far and enjoy my work, come and say hi on my [tumblr](https://missorgana.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/empstrikesback) !!


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